Bold statement of the day: storing up too much extra food can be theologically dangerous.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking about those cans and boxes in your pantry. Yes, you. Your little Annie\u2019s Mac & Cheeses, lentil soups, refried beans, ricearonis, whatever it is you store up. Theologically dangerous. Yes, I said it. Watch out.<\/p>\n
I wouldn’t counsel utter foolishness, of course. I know a good deal when I see one. As a matter of principle I won\u2019t say no to 75% off. And certain places can really get me going. When I\u2019m house shopper (we divide it up \u2013 one person to the farmer\u2019s market, one to TJ\u2019s, one to Safeway) I find it much harder to shop at Safeway than the farmers\u2019 market. At the farmer\u2019s market, you look around and see what\u2019s good, and guess how much a hungry household will eat in a week, and I almost never have a problem with going over budget. We can only eat so much in a week. At Safeway I\u2019m constantly tempted. They know how my brain works. They offer 50% off sales, or even worse, they say \u201cbuy one get one FREE\u201d and my brain sees \u201cfree\u201d and says \u201cwell it would be a sin to leave that to go to waste, I\u2019d better help them out here.\u201d I end up spending way over the weekly budget and we end up with stacks and stacks of 60-percent-off pasta. We eat it, eventually, of course.<\/p>\n
There is a theological side of this story. Ellen Davis talks about the \u201cmanna economy\u201d of the desert, and the \u201cempire economy\u201d of Egypt. When the Israelites were enslaved, they looked around and saw silo after huge silo of stored grain. They may not have had direct access to it, but it was there in case of famine, courtesy of Pharoah\u2019s food policy programs. In the desert it was the polar opposite \u2013 their manna was not physically capable of being stored. It would rot overnight. Forget building a silo \u2013 you’d have to live day to day. The manna story shows the economic implications of relying on your food directly from the hand of God \u2013 if there is no storing it up, there is no taxing it either, or running an overpriced supply chain out of Pharoah\u2019s silos. Everyone gets what they need – no more, no less.<\/p>\n
The manna economy does not come easily in the real world. We are keepers, storers, hoarders – and recently TV shows have shown us the dark underside of that strain that runs through our culture. It is not that unusual for people to have cans in their closet that end up expiring before they can eat them all \u2013 because so many sales have convinced them they absolutely MUST take this cheap little can of food home with them, store it up, feel secure against potential disasters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a funny philosophy\u2026 to think that God would somehow love the perishable food more than the imperishable\u2026 and might even want us to face the world without a prudent reserve\u2026 but it must come from something like the same theology that says \u201cblessed are the poor\u201d and other such backwards things.<\/p>\n
What is your personal food theology? What does your pantry or fridge say about your relationship to God? Or have you intellectualized it out of that realm completely?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bold statement of the day: storing up too much extra food can be theologically dangerous.<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>\r\n
I’m talking about those cans and boxes in your pantry. Yes, you. Your little Annie’s Mac & Cheeses, lentil soups, refried beans, ricearonis, whatever it is you store up. Theologically dangerous. Yes, I said it. Watch out.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[365,368,34,367,366],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-bible","tag-economy","tag-food","tag-manna","tag-scripture"],"yoast_head":"\n